When You and I Share Perspectives

Abstract

Readers mentally simulate the objects and events described in narratives. One common assumption is that readers mentally embody an actor's perspective; alternatively, readers might mentally simulate events from an external "onlooker" perspective. Two experiments examined the role of pronouns in modulating a reader's adopted perspective when comprehending simple event sentences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that readers embody an actor's perspective when the pronoun you or I is used, but take an external perspective when he is used. Experiment 2, however, found that a short discourse context preceding the event sentence led readers to adopt an external perspective with the pronoun I. These experiments demonstrate that pronoun variation and discourse context mediate the degree of embodiment experienced during narrative comprehension: In all cases, readers mentally simulate objects and events, but they embody an actor's perspective only when directly addressed as the subject of a sentence.

I understand you feel that way, but I feel this way: the benefits of I-language and communicating perspective during conflict

“…Furthermore, research from the embodied cognition field of study has produced evidence to suggest that text narratives using you-language foster more self-referential processing in the reader compared to I-language (Beveridge & Pickering, 2013; Brunye et al, 2009, 2011; Ditman et al, 2010). Compared to I-language, studies have found you-language associated with subsequent faster response times for pictures from a self-perspective (versus other-perspective) (Brunye et al, 2009), better memory performance (Ditman et al, 2010), and higher emotional reactivity (Brunye et al, 2011).…”

“…Compared to I-language, studies have found you-language associated with subsequent faster response times for pictures from a self-perspective (versus other-perspective) (Brunye et al, 2009), better memory performance (Ditman et al, 2010), and higher emotional reactivity (Brunye et al, 2011). While these studies do not directly investigate conflict, the finding that you-language fosters greater self-referential processing is of relevance for conflict.…”

Event segmentation during first-person continuous events

“…We think that it does because there is a growing body of research suggesting that perspective does matter for some aspects of situation model processing for narrative text (Brunye et al, 2009(Brunye et al, , 2011Ditman et al, 2010), such as picture-description matching, and off-line measures such as the speed and accuracy of recognition probe or comprehension questions answering. It is important to note that to date there are no studies of the impact of perspective on online event segmentation, and our study does not compare segmentation for first-and thirdperson experiences.…”

“…These studies show that the use of second-person pronouns (i.e., you) leads readers to simulate events from a first-person perspective (i.e., from the perspective of the actor; Brunye et al, 2009), which has implications on the details of spatial relationships and affective states of characters that get represented and remembered in a mental model (Brunye et al, 2011). If perspective affects the processing of some dimensions of mental models in texts, it raises the question as to whether it matters for visually based events.…”

“…Third, there is a growing body of evidence that perspective in narrative affects the nature of mental models that are constructed for texts (Brunye, Ditman, Mahoney, & Taylor, 2011;Brunye, Ditman, Mahoney, Augustyn, & Taylor, 2009;Ditman, Brunye, Mahoney, & Taylor, 2010). These studies show that the use of second-person pronouns (i.e., you) leads readers to simulate events from a first-person perspective (i.e., from the perspective of the actor; Brunye et al, 2009), which has implications on the details of spatial relationships and affective states of characters that get represented and remembered in a mental model (Brunye et al, 2011).…”